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Month: May 2015

So admittedly this post is a little bit tongue-in-cheek. And I am writing it with the greatest of respect to those referenced in this piece. Just wanted to say that as a point of context.

About a week ago, I went out for my friend/ex-coworker’s birthday. Though approaching 40, married and with kids, she has never looked or seemed her age: not in attitude, appearance, etc. She planned a girls’ night out (GNO– an acronym I only recently learned) along with a bunch of her similarly aged and similarly situated friends.

Now, I’m in my mid 30s, unmarried, no children. My energy levels have taken a nosedive recently, though I suspect it’s more to my lifestyle and less based on my age as I will soon explain. So I was a little eh since a night out can have such an impact on your body the next day at this age than it ever did in one’s 20s. But she was excited and I wanted to make sure she had a good time. So I rallied!

As her friends trickled in to the Thai restaurant that had been selected as the first stop in that night’s festivities, the only thing that came to mind as I met each of them was: WOW. For being older than me, and managing a family at home, they look GREAT! I mean from body to skin to everything appearance-wise, I could not believe some of these women were in their late 30s to early 40s. It was incredible.

Now I have blogged about this a little bit here and there. I am often pretty vocal about making good choices in one’s youth. One, because it’s important and two, sometimes because I didn’t make good choices myself and I want future generations to learn from my mistakes. I have always said: use sunscreen. Everyday. Maybe even multiple times per day. I also believe in being reasonably smart about the things that you consume. I personally like to cook a lot of my meals from scratch as I have an aversion to the chemicals and preservatives that they put in packaged goods. I’m not a fan of fad diets or unrealistic expectations when it comes to dietary trends, like fasts and the like. My personal philosophy is: make good choices that are at least logical if not grounded in dietary facts. Don’t swing wildly one way or the other (because your body knows it and it will adjust, and negatively, given these inconsistencies). Just generally try to do the right thing for the needs of your body.

I think meeting these women was something related to seeing evidence, in the flesh, that a balanced life is something worth pursuing. I literally stared at the woman sitting next to me in the face for long periods of time (she probably got freaked out by it). Her skin could be described as nothing short of luminescent. No wrinkles. No acne. No age spots. Just exquisite skin. I don’t know if it was genetics or life choices but she as well as multiple attendees were in better physical shape than I would say is true of many people my age and younger.

So then we get to the dance floor. At one point, my friend (the birthday girl), said to me, “This is moms gone wild!” We were drinking and dancing like it was nobody’s business! At one point, a group of mid 20s boys (yes, I called them boys) came up and started hitting on people in the group. One guy had a man bun. It was actually really cute but also a bit hilarious.

This is where I give my observations about girls in clubs, now that I’ve been to two in the past two months (this is like a record high for me at this point). I get that people go to clubs to be seen and also to attract the opposite sex. So naturally, it’s kind of a competitive place where girls are vying for guys and vice versa. But my experience of 20-something girls at dance clubs is that they just seem really bitchy. They are there tugging on their too-tight clothes, giving you the stink eye as you walk by. At one club a few months ago, a group of girls was being obnoxious and pushing people around on the dance club.

So I guess that might explain why the group I was with attracted some attention. We were there just to have fun, dance, goof around. Not standing around self-consciously hoping guys would notice us. I don’t know. I know that this is all a part of being young and the single life. And maybe I was this way too– though I don’t remember ever eyeing other girls up and down and giving them the stink eye.

So I named this piece the things I learned form spending a night out with MILFs (which if you haven’t already figured out means “Mother I’d like to {F-word}”). I learned if you take care of yourself, you can be extraordinarily hot when you’re older. That you should always look for opportunities to just shake it out and have fun. Umm, and that the intact bonds between women who have been in each others’ lives from school to marriage to now being the matriarchs in their families is really quite inspiring.

Oooh, I realized I haven’t write in quite some time. Without going too much into it work has been tough for the past couple of months. Not knowing what the future holds, I made the only somewhat spontaneous decision to head to my beloved South America, thereby blowing out all my PTO in the next week. I had been thinking about it for some time, but priorities during the earlier part of May made it difficult. But seeing as that there is a three day weekend coming up, a reasonable plane ticket was secured, it’s now early Fall in South America and eff it, why not? I made the choice to buy the ticket last night.